Editors note: This story was written before beaches in New Bedford reopened to swimmers on Tuesday, July 8.

Hurricane Arthur came and went relatively quickly, but it left a legacy: New Bedford beachgoers still can't go in the water and SouthCoast quahoggers still can't dig.

Four days after rains came fast and furious into the region, SouthCoast communities are still playing catch-up.

Shellfishing areas have been closed throughout Buzzards Bay, as have New Bedford's beaches, due to excess amounts of bacteria in the water.

That bacterium comes largely from the region's sewage treatment plants, many of which were working overtime during the storm to keep up with the rain.

New Bedford's underground pipes carry both storm water and raw sewage to its waste water treatment plant in the South End. That plant can process about three million gallons of wastewater per hour, or about 75 million gallons per day. When the pipes are inundated in large rain events, the mixture is frequently discharged into Buzzards Bay without being treated through 27 combined sewage overflows.

Friday's storm, which brought eight inches of rain to the city, was no exception, said Department of Public Infrastructure Commissioner Ronald LaBelle. During the storm, the rain came so fast that manhole covers popped off and were floating in flooded streets, he said.

"That's part of life in New Bedford," he said.

LaBelle estimated that "99 percent" of what was discharged into the bay is rain water, but, "there is sewage mixed in, and with sewage goes bacteria."

"A rain event like this is going to shut everything down, the beaches, the shellfishing, everything," he said.

LaBelle estimated that New Bedford's beaches could be closed for five days.

A spokeswoman for the Division of Marine Fisheries said the agency is currently reviewing its shellfish closures throughout Buzzards Bay and some areas may reopen soon.

While spewing raw sewage is not rare for New Bedford, it is for the Town of Fairhaven, where the Department of Public Works had to discharge more than 150,000 gallons of sewage into the harbor.

That's unusual for Fairhaven, where Department of Public Works Superintendent Vincent Furtado said the sewage system was inundated with rainwater.

Unlike New Bedford, Fairhaven's rainwater and sewage systems are separate, and sewage should not be affected by a large storm. But a combination of old, cracked pipes and residents who illegally tie sump pumps into the sewage system meant the sewage system was inundated with excess water, officials said

The storm, which dumped about six inches of rain in town, overwhelmed the plant, which can process five million gallons a day and store five million more gallons for treatment later.

"Us discharging into the water does not usually happen, not even during hurricanes," Furtado said. "But on Friday it was just too, too, too much water and it came in too, too, too fast to keep up with."

In Marion, Wastewater Superintendent Frank Cooper said the plant did not have to discharge into the bay thanks, in part, to recent efforts to update the town's pipes. That, along with a 20-acre holding lagoon, helped Marion avoid what happened in Fairhaven.

"The lagoons are an integral part of our system, because anytime we get too much rainwater in the sewage, we just divert it there until the plant can handle it," he said.

Marion's plant processes an average of 588,000 gallons of sewage per day. During Hurricane Arthur, much of the excess was diverted to the lagoons and the plant has not had a chance to process that sewage until this week.

In Dartmouth, wastewater treatment plant operator Carlos Cardoso said the plant was able to keep up with the rain.

"Luckily we had a dry week before," he said. "If it had been a rainy week and then we had that storm, we would have had a problem."